#chapbook sample

I remember what it was like the first time I escaped my narcissistic mother. I escaped her by joining the military. They sent us to a hotel the night before we got on the plane, and I remember being so happy to finally be free of my abusive family.

I remember feeling as if I had just busted out of a prison. I ran through the hotel room, laughing and gleeful. I even jumped on the bed. My roommate was older than me and thought I was a kid she must look after.

I was just nineteen.

Now more than a decade later, I have to break free all over again. I feel like that nineteen-year-old girl, so eager to find unconditional love and financial freedom and self-esteem and all the things children from normal homes receive and achieve without even thinking. Their cup was always full while mine was always empty. How did I even survive?

I feel like a flower that grew from the snow.

I went to run a bath and paused when I noticed a large cricket sitting at the bottom of the tub. I gently gathered it in my hand, took it outside, and released it into the bright day.

The Chinese believe that crickets are lucky.

I agree. That cricket was lucky I was wearing my glasses.

Otherwise, I would have turned the water on, it would have drowned, and I would have taken a bath with a dead cricket.

When I was about twelve, my partner already had a girlfriend when I started dating them. I found out the truth because I was friends with their sister, and she told me. I gave them back their ring, and I remember just sitting there staring coldly into space while my partner cried on their knees, begging to know what they did wrong. I was baffled by their tears. Why were they so hurt? I was the one who had been lied to and used. But they were crying like I had no right to be sad or angry.

When I refused to acknowledge their existence, they started sitting behind me on the school bus every day, loudly insulting me. Their sadness turned to anger. My anger turned to sadness. Because I went home and cried everyday.

Almost all my relationships were like this. My "girlfriend" in my twenties was already married. I kept attracting these people because there was a lesson I needed to learn -- one of self-respect and self-love. And because it took me so long to learn it, I had to become Miss Independent, the Queen of Swords, someone who could coldly cut someone off in a heartbeat to survive that emotional anguish.

In the end, that was to my detriment. My heart became closed off, and that made it difficult for people to love me. And now here I am, trying to be a better person, trying to heal from all that trauma.

What an utterly human, flawed mess am I.

My turtle has spent about six years living outside, in the yard. Today, I brought her indoors, thinking to protect her from danger. It was the first time I brought her indoors in years.

She was furious.

She stamped around, trying to push open doors, and when the doors wouldn’t open, she clawed at the wall, got in a fight with my lamp, and nearly up-ended my bookshelf.

She wanted to be out in the sunlight, not in the dark house with me.

I sat on my bed and watched her in sadness, thinking that I was her, trapped in the dark and trying desperately to claw myself back to the sunlight. And I realized she’d never forgive me if I forced her to live in a small apartment with me all over again. I realized she would be better off if I . . . simply left her behind.

Despair is finally realizing that when I come out of exile, it will be alone.

I sat in the rain today. Sat there and watched my turtle swimming as I thought about finally leaving this town and how the two of us were about to embark on a new adventure. I sang under my breath as my hand tickled her shell, “One day, I’ll fly away . . .”

My turtle stopped to listen. Perhaps she knows the winds will be changing soon.

A turtle is a friend for life. Mine has pretty much been with me my entire life – or rather, for a great portion of it. When I think about it, she was the only consistent thing. People came and went, people hurt me and abandoned me, but she was always there.

When I went to boot camp, she waited.

When I was moving states and had to sleep on the floor, she slept in my sleeping bag with me.

When I was homeless, she lived in the park with me.

She was always so chill and content, perfectly willing to walk at my side through fire if she had to.

So long as I kept supplying bananas.

I was making (vegan) burritos when I cut my finger on the sharp edge of the can of corn. It was a moderately deep cut, and because I live some place very hot, my finger gushed from the wound.

I put my finger under the faucet but – again – I live some place hot, so getting cold water out of the faucet takes a minute.

I found myself struggling to open a Band-Aid with one hand and my teeth. Unsurprisingly, the Band-Aid spiraled to the floor – how sanitary! – and I had to awkwardly stoop to snatch it up while keeping my bloody hand under the faucet.

By the time I had the Band-Aid on and was back to making burritos, I realized that the entire incident needn’t have happened, if only I wasn’t alone all the time, if only I had someone there to just put the fucking Band-Aid on for me.

Seems my entire life has been me struggling alone to put on Band-Aids.

Men spend their lives

balding,

worrying about size,

while women orgasm

with two fingers

and trembling thighs.

I think one huge reason I haven't been with many women is that I just don't notice them. Writers are daydreamy by nature. We are always up in our heads in some fantasy world. I spent most of AIT up in my head mentally writing this (really bad) novel and most of the time, I wasn't paying attention to the women around me.

There was this one girl who chased me hard, and I didn't even notice or put two and two together until she confronted me in the laundry room and was blunt with her desires. I was with my abusive ex at the time, so I gently turned her down.

I always think of her and wish that I had left my ex for her. I still remember how she looked in the dim light of the laundry room, sitting on the floor against the dryer, looking at me with those wanting eyes. She was so beautiful and so frustrated.

There were so many prettier gay women around, I always wondered what the fuck she wanted with me.